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It’s been almost two months since I announced the launch of WaveCenter, and traffic has slowed to a tiny trickle. There were obviously some serious flaws in the WaveCenter plan and/or in the execution of that plan, and I wanted to take just a few minutes to summarize on the lessons that I learned from this experience.

But first, I want to just take a few minutes to reflect on how I feel about this experience. You see, WaveCenter is a concept that has been developing in my mind and in my heart for almost 20 years. To say that I have a lot of mental and emotional energy tied up in the concept is a huge understatement. In time maybe I’ll be able to express the significance of this project to me, but I’ll leave that for another time. But given that I poured my heart and soul into this project, spent countless hours planning and producing videos, put my face and my voice on the web for all to see and offered my precious ideas with enthusiasm and clarity, only to be met by a collective yawn by those who viewed it, well… you might think that I would be pretty devastated. But oddly, (even to me) I’m not.

Maybe part of the reason for that is I’ve suffered so many disappointments and defeats in my business career that I’m just used to it–it doesn’t even phase me any more. But I think there’s more to it than that. I guess I don’t really feel defeated because somehow I don’t think this is the end of the story. Even though I gave it my best shot and the world clearly said “No”, I think I’m just choosing to hear “Not Now”. I believe the concepts that form WaveCenter are fundamental, so I at some other time and under different circumstances it could spring back to life at any time. Meanwhile, I feel like I accomplished something worthwhile. I suppose what it boils down to is that even though others don’t seem to get the concept or think much of it, I still love it. Like a painter who really likes their own works of art…who care’s what other people think? And I

Of course, this was a business venture, so of course it matters what other people thinks in that sense. So I also want to step back and examine the specific reasons that something which I believe is such an awesome thing could be so uniformly disregarded by almost everyone else.

First, it’s obvious that this concept was just too involved for most people to absorb. Over years of thinking about it, it had evolved in my mind into this multi-dimensional, complex organism made up of parts that inter-connected in myriad ways. I could see how all the parts would work together because I had been thinking about it, and indeed, had conceived the whole thing. But others couldn’t. And that doesn’t surprise me. I’d hoped others would see it if I explained it clearly, but I’m not surprised that they didn’t.

The other key failure point was simply a flaw in execution and my old achilles heel—impatience. My plan was to introduce this plan to a bunch of very successful entrepreneurs who I thought would get the idea. I wanted to have several of those impressive individuals signed on to the plan before I ever launched it publicly. The idea would be that once I launched and other people saw these impressive individuals jumping on board one by one, they would want to join the band wagon and we’d get a chain reaction going. I was also set on a specific launch date: 8/24/10. Well, in the weeks leading up to that launch date I was trying to make contact with those specific individuals and secure my “aces in the hole”. The problem was, no one was responding to me. As my launch date approached I had a “go/no go” decision to make–launch without a net or abort and just keep trying to interest those key people. I decided to launch. And the rest, as they say, is history. People checked it out, saw nothing was happening here, and left.

There are so many details involved that I could go on and on about it. But my main take away lessons are:

1) Do something so simple that people can get it within a 30 seconds. The complexity has to be time-released.
2) Use the plan as a guide, but go with the flow. Keep applying the pressure and moving forward, but don’t force it.

I’m planning to apply these lessons to my next big venture: MentorNet.com. I hope to have better luck with that, and I believe I will. And who knows… if all goes well with MentorNet I may be back to dust off WaveCenter again. Meanwhile, it’s off to Web mothballs for WaveCenter. If you’re curious you can check out the plan here.